Teel Time: Keeping 6-6 teams eligible for bowls fine by ACC coaches

No 6-6, bowl-eligible ACC team has ever missed college football’s bloated postseason, a trend that’s likely to continue.

As the Birmingham News’ Jon Solomon reported this week, a Big Ten proposal to elevate the minimum record for bowl qualification to 7-5 has gained little traction.

That’s just fine with the ACC. The conference had no formal position on the matter, associate commissioner for Michael Kelly said, but the league’s coaches unanimously opposed the idea.

No shock there. Even after a .500 regular season that likely was disappointing, bowls offer coaches a selling point to recruits, three extra weeks of practice and – wink, wink – a sweet bonus.

ACC coaches’ opposition intensified with the conference’s adoption of a nine-game league schedule, Kelly said. Indeed, an extra conference game means one less chance to play a winnable non-league contest.

Increasing the standard to 7-5 would have been a death knell for several of college football’s 35 bowls, hardly catastrophic.

For example, last year only one 7-5 team, the Sun Belt’s Western Kentucky, was bypassed for postseason. Meanwhile, 14 teams with six victories played in bowls, including the ACC’s Wake Forest.